For Once
by Rosage
Summary: Miles Edgeworth is haunted by nightmares, and he knows nobody cares—but for once, that might change. Childhood Edgeworth Franziska sibling fluff.


Miles felt a clamp squeeze his chest as he pitched forward, gasping and clawing his face with sweaty hands. His vision juxtaposed with his dream, giving him a headache and the sense that his sanity had slipped. Squeezing his sheets to chase away the feeling of metal, he cast desperate eyes over his room. The bookcase was tightly packed, the desk was laid out with last night's notes, and the painting of a famous judge hung directly across from him, making him shrink from its gaze.

While his heart still raced, the sights slowed his hyperventilating. Sleeping with his light on shamed him, but without it he wouldn't have realized he wasn't still trapped in that elevator.

He glanced at his clock and slumped. Three A.M—only one and a half hours since he'd fallen asleep, and he never slept twice in one night. Resigning himself to studying until morning, he swung his feet over the side of the bed before darting them back under the covers and cursing Germany's climate. Back home, it wouldn't have been this cold. Back home, he could have climbed out of bed and entered his father's study, fancying for a moment that the desk he sat at was his own. His father would find him and chuckle at his sheepishness before carrying him to bed, where he'd read to him until he fell asleep.

He clutched his knees to his chest and told himself to stop wishing. Hadn't it only been a week since his shameful gaffe? When, in his sleep-deprived state, he'd been so happy to see Mr. von Karma return from abroad with a set of law books for him that he'd stupidly addressed the man as _father_. The look on his mentor's face had made him want to bury himself in the nearest hole.

He rested his chin on his knees. Being rescued from the orphanage had been such a stroke of luck he barely believed it. How foolish he'd been to think he'd be any less alone.

The click of the door jolted him. Wary of intruders, he steeled a glare on it that turned to confusion when it opened to reveal an empty hall. He tilted his head down and found a round face peering up at him.

"Franziska? What are you doing here?" When her blank stare reminded him how little English she knew, he gestured for her to come in. Towing a book half her size behind her, she climbed up and plopped beside him, shoving the book—a German-English dictionary—into his hands along with a piece of paper containing messily-scrawled German. After several moments of squinting, he deduced its meaning.

_You scream at night. Why? Don't tell Papa I left my room. _

He furrowed his brow. He didn't remember screaming, but then, he was asleep. If he was still doing it when he woke, it blended with the one in his dreams.

She thrust a pen at him. He took it, his mind wandering. Why hadn't anyone told him he screamed until now? His room was in a far corner of the manor, but space at the orphanage had been in short order. He knew by now not to expect anyone to care, but…

A pinch on his arm snapped him out of his brooding. Wincing, he yanked away. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Fool," Franziska said, patting the page in his lap.

"You didn't have to pinch me," he grumbled.

"Fool," she repeated, pursing her lips. "Foolishly foolish fool."

He paid her no heed. It was the only English word she knew, and he wasn't even sure she knew what it meant.

Returning to his message almost made him resume brooding. The only thing that stopped him was the realization that someone _had _come to check on him. He glanced at Franziska. In the two years he'd lived there, he hadn't paid her much notice; a little girl didn't have much to offer his studies. He caught her toes wiggling and hurried to write his response.

Had she been an adult, had he not been half-asleep, and had he not been desperate for someone to care, he would have been too prideful to admit his problem. Instead, he penned, in careful German, _Nightmares. I won't tell if you don't._

Before he could reconsider, she snatched the page and held it close to her nose. "Fool," she pronounced, before slowly shaping a response. He stared at his own wiggling toes while he waited.

_Weakling, _her reply read. _About what? I won't tell._

His cheeks burned at the insult, doubly so since a five year old had gotten to him. He could have told her it wasn't her business, but the compression in his chest hadn't let up, and in the light of the lamp, the judge painting seemed to be demanding his testimony. Clenching his teeth, he wrote, _Something bad I did, _hastening to add, _Not real._

The compression remained. He cursed his foolishness. Had he seriously thought scribbling a confession to a five year old would absolve him? Before he could cross it out, Franziska snatched the paper. When a minute passed without a sound, he stopped kicking his legs and glanced at her. Her grim expression made him wonder if that was how he looked to people who told him he was too serious for a child.

The note she finally handed him made his mouth go dry. _If you're bad, Papa will punish you. _Her gaze—wide and unwavering, yet solemn—seemed somehow harder to hide from than the judge's.

_I know, _he replied. _It wasn't real_.

She gave his response a satisfied nod. It took him several moments to make sense of her reply, and even then it confused him. _Then there's_ _no need for your face to wrinkle, little brother._

'Little brother?' Eyebrow raised, he turned to her. With her hands gripping her nightgown between her knees, she would have looked the picture of innocence had she not been mimicking her father's smirk. Miles scowled. "My face does _not _wrinkle," he said. His hostility apparently coming through, Franziska scowled back and scribbled furiously. This reply took him less time to translate, but he spent far longer staring at it, checking and rechecking the dictionary out of the assumption that there must be some mistake.

_You're the newest to the family, so I'm older._

Any other time he would have scoffed at her logic, but a lump in his throat stopped him. Struggling to keep his pen steady, he repeated: _family_?

Scrunching her nose, she flipped the dictionary to the proper page and pointed. "Family," she said in German, before making a shaky attempt at pronouncing it in English. Then, in case the word wasn't right, she turned the page again and pointed at another one. "Brother."

He squeezed his eyes shut before he could disgrace himself. When he opened them, she was still frowning, no doubt wondering if her message had gotten lost in translation. He nodded to reassure her it hadn't before shooing her off to bed.

As soon as the door shut, exhaustion claimed him. Fearful of the images imprinted on them, he fought his eyelids' heaviness, but when his neck failed to keep his head from dropping against the pillow, he let them close, thinking that maybe, for once, it would be safe to sleep.


End file.
